The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Tag: war

  • + Other Cartographies

    + Other Cartographies

    Kiara Marina Firpi Carrión reveals the motivations behind + Other Cartographies, a research project to highlight work by women map-makers.

  • Marching Orders

    Marching Orders

      The drums began to crescendo, War horses and infantry prepare; A performance all to common in history. Footsteps echo through corridors, Marching to the drumbeat’s cacophony. Left, left, left-right-left The energy becomes a symphony! Left, right, left Orders obscured by the drums Unclear, of who may be the enemy. In the distance, perceived dissension;…

  • Gardens Speak

    Gardens Speak

    The Political Performance of Mourning Gardens Speak is an interactive sound installation based on the oral histories of ten ordinary people who were buried in gardens across Syria during the first two years of the uprising. Each narrative has been carefully constructed with the friends and family members of the deceased to retell their stories,…

  • Ghosts on the Shore

    Ghosts on the Shore

    Identities – of people and of places – form slowly over time, through the sedimentary accretion of multiple overlapping layers. Even the oldest or most deeply buried stories never entirely disappear. Sometimes it takes the archaeologist, or the psychoanalyst, to do a little digging. Paul Scraton’s Ghosts on the Shore enacts a sustained process of…

  • Editorial: Wolf Crossing

    Editorial: Wolf Crossing

    Look into the eyes of the wolf. What does it see? On 29th August 2016, shortly after the announcement of Steve Bannon’s appointment as Donald Trump’s new campaign CEO, The New Yorker ran a cartoon by Paul Noth. It shows a large billboard standing in a field of grazing sheep. Upon it is a wolf…

  • Crossing Over

    Crossing Over

    Late November in Malaga is beautiful and easy: sun, cloudless skies and highs in the upper twenties. The olive trees bask in the late late heat, the Mickey-Mouse-head-shaped cactuses bloom with geranium-pink blossoms and the tourists still soak up rays outside cafés like solar batteries. But drive two hours inland to Granada and the temperature…

  • Open Call: Wolf Crossing

    Open Call: Wolf Crossing

    In Finland there is a line around the city: susiraja, the wolf border. Within is law and order: shopping malls and social security. Beyond the susiraja lie the wilds and the wolves – just 200 at the last count. Who will howl in the forests when the last wolf departs? The susiraja may be inviolable…

  • The Future is the Past: Harwich, Essex

    The Future is the Past: Harwich, Essex

    Harwich has a split personality. At the northeasternmost point of Essex, the old town is still laid out as the medieval port it once was, but it’s separated from the cranes at Harwich International Port situated a mile up the Stour river. For centuries it was a key access point to Europe: a “gateway”, when…

  • Scenes from an Execution Variations

    Scenes from an Execution Variations

    Few things are as messy as war. Cause and effect, right and wrong: our foundational truths unravel in the face of violence and bloodshed. This has not always been the case when it comes to the art of war. Classical depictions of war were grand, complex compositions, often mythological or generalised. In medieval times, the…

  • Beauty and Revolution / A Token of Concrete Affection

    Beauty and Revolution / A Token of Concrete Affection

    Now is the time to visit Cambridge if you’re a fan of concrete poetry. At Kettle’s Yard is Beauty and Revolution, an exhibition of work by Ian Hamilton Finlay, while the Centre of Latin American Studies plays host to a group exhibition entitled A Token of Concrete Affection. Both are furnished from the private collection…